third french republicconcept:era modern
The Birth of the World
Large oil on canvas by Joan Miró (1925). Miró stained and dripped paint onto the canvas, then added biomorphic forms and lines in automatic-gesture fashion. A black triangle, white disc, kite-string figure, and star float in an indeterminate cosmic space. MoMA, New York.
Scholarly Significance
Miró's breakthrough into Surrealist biomorphic abstraction; the cosmic scale and automatist method make it key for Surrealism cluster.
Notes
- ·Painted in 1925, the year after Breton's Surrealist Manifesto.
- ·Miró's technique: staining canvas with diluted paint, then adding forms directly without planning — classic psychic automatism.
- ·The title was given later by Miró; the work was exhibited at Pierre Loeb gallery, Paris, 1925.
- ·MoMA acquired the work in 1972 — it had been in private European collections.
- ·One of Miró's largest paintings; the scale itself is cosmological — the canvas becomes a universe.